Each of these judges, be it
remembered, held competent in his individuality to administer the
criminal law of the country--each of whom, in fact, in his
individuality does so administer it unchallenged and unquestioned.
"A sentence under such circumstances, be it for a long period or a
short would be wanting in the element of moral effect--the effect of
example--which could alone give it value, and which is professedly
the aim of all legal punishment. A sentence under such circumstances
would be far from reassuring to the public mind as to the
'certainties' of the law, and would fail to commend the approval or
win the respect of any man 'within the realm or without.' While to
the prisoner, to the sufferer in chief, it would only bring the
bitter, and certainly not the repentant feeling that he suffered in
the wrong--that he was the victim of an injustice based on an
inference which not even the tyrant's plea of necessity can
sustain--namely, that at a particular time he was at a distance of
three thousand miles from the place where he then actually stood in
bodily presence, and that at that distance he actually thought the
thoughts and acted the acts of men unknown to him even by name.
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